The Arroyo Food Co-opis holding a soap making class on Saturday afternoon. The store is open on Saturdays and Sundays (as well as on Tuesdays) for shopping and pick-ups. Orders placed online by Sunday midnight will be available for pick-up starting next Tuesday. By the way: The Co-op needs volunteers to help keep the store open through the holiday season, especially on December 21, 23, 28 and 30 as well as on January 3 and 4. A special volunteer orientation has been scheduled for Sunday, December 14, 2 p.m. Sign up for orientation and your volunteering slot here.

Survey. Pasadena Water and Power is conducting a survey on the city's energy future. To participate go to https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PWP_Energy_Future2014. (Note: PWP has not posted any information on when the survey period ends, but as of this printing the link was still up.)

Exhibition. The Armory presents Karin Apollonia Müller's World’s Edge, a photographic exploration of the intersection between the natural landscape and complex urbanization. Ends next summer.

Random read. Research suggests that honeybees and other insects feel pain and emotions, and even turn moody much like humans do. For one entomologist trying to understand colony collapse disorder, Sainath Suryanarayanan, the pain he had to inflict on the bees in lab experiments eventually became too much. He experienced nightmares and would often wake up gagging — until he found a non-torturous way of studying bees. Suryanarayanan ditched the lab and the poison-laced food that scientists use to slowly kill the insects while they study them. Instead, he launched a project to understand bees by observing them in the various landscapes in which they live. Entomologists, ecologists, beekeepers, growers, government representatives and humanitarians will work together on this "transdisciplinary inquiry" to figure out how different levels of environmental toxicity affect bees in different ways. For, as Heather Swan writes in a fascinating story titled The Sorrow of Bees in Aeon Magazine,"the life of the honeybee cannot be divorced from the humans who work with them, count on them, love them."

- - - - - - - - - - -

Unless otherwise noted, all events take place in Pasadena. For times, addresses and other details please see the calendar page of Pasastainable, CA or the event owner's webpage.

Search Site

Reporting for this blog

Christina Schweighofer is an Austrian born, bilingual journalist who immigrated to the United States in 1999. She, her husband and their daughter live in Pasadena, California. Christina freelances for American, German and Austrian newspapers and magazines including Pasadena Weekly and various USC publications.

Get RSS feeds

Get updates via email

Got an update?

Use the contact form below to forward press releases, announcements and calendar updates, and to suggest topics for posts or corrections. Pasastainable, CA will look at all the material it receives but does not guarantee its publication.